REVIEW: Galactic Pegasus – Pariah [EP/2014]

Cast out—forced to live alone and isolated from the society that raised you, you’ve spent years stewing, marinating in your own hatred for the culture that resigned you to castigation. To say you’ve been brooding doesn’t do the years spent in splendid isolation justice—you’ve been maturing, strengthening every last drop of your physical and mental manifestation of bitterness and aggression—of cunning and malice. You are every ounce Pariah—the latest release by crushing Canadian progressive metalcore act Galactic Pegasus. Returning after a prolonged period of radio silence, this merciless metalcore juggernaut is back with a well-honed blade of downtuned, technical aggression that’s thirsty for blood. The day has come for this Pariah to wreak havoc upon the society that outlawed it—and it refuses to yield any mercy or spare a single survivor.

Pariah is just as belligerently brutal as it is sinister and technical—combining lacerating, intense heaviness with winding, mind-melting technicality. This dynamic, while nothing inherently new to the genre, is done to perfection. Galactic Pegasus have mastered the balancing act between precise, punishing technicality and down-right devastating breakdowns and slams.

The first aspect of this intense dynamic to assault the listener is the slow transition from surreal, atmospheric ambience to sheer, spine-shredding anger. “Blank Face” is a tedious journey into the outer fringes of Pariah’s mind—a journey around thick, dense brush and unyielding nature into a place so far removed from society that the listener doesn’t even know where they are—and that is when Galactic Pegasus strike. Just as “Blank Face” begins to confuse the listener and wear away at their attention span, the ambience flips to anger and the track digresses into limitlessly dense aggression. A similar approach is taken on other tracks throughout the album—“Abyssal Plain” in particular—where Pariah leads the listener into a distant, unidentifiable clearing only to put a blade to their throat and slice, bleeding them dry of sanity and lifeforce alike. Pariah is a behemoth of indefinable strength precisely when the listener least expects it—and when it is most effective for Galactic Pegasus to strike.

The other half to Galactic Pegasus’ mastery of progressive metalcore lies in their use of intense technicality and furious fretwork to awe the listener into pure, blissful paralysis. “Draw the Line” and “False Fathers” do this exceptionally—demonstrating Nicholas Mahy’s brilliant basswork and Baena and Lagace’s dynamic duo of down-tempo chug and vicious, merciless groove. All the while, Dallas Turner fills every spare second of aural emptiness with insane, precise and perfunctory percussion with fills to be had at a second’s notice. All of these sporadic elements of immense technicality manage to flow together into a cohesive blend of brutalizing mastery that seems to weave its way into the listener’s flesh through the pores of their skin and simply pull, driving them insane an forcing them into a surreal, awe-fueled and dream-like state of pure shock.

These two faces of the Janus-like God of metalcore that is Pariah combine to unleash complete fury upon the listener. While the instrumental intensity of “Draw the Line” tears and shreds the listener in twain, the vocals and chug-driven maelstrom—spiked with a surprise guest—of “Abyssal Plain” is nothing short of pure insanity, cinched into a five-minute-long track. Galactic Pegasus excel above the likes of their peers by being able to combine such drastically intense efforts at immersive technicality and skull-splitting brutality into one, fluid and jaw-dropping sound. There is not one second of this album that fails to flow fluidly into the next—even if some portions sound just a touch too much like the others—making minor monotony the only minor flaw in this otherwise stellar release.

By the time Pariah is done extracting its revenge upon the society responsible for its scorn, there is nothing but scorched and salted earth left. The same can be said for Galactic Pegasus’ attack on the listener—by the time these Canadian chuggernauts are done belittling the listener with brutalizing down-tempo and prolapse inducing grooves, the only thing left is an empty shell, alone and outcast.